I WILL TRY TO ANSWER YOUR QUESTIONS (USING BOLD SO U CAN SEE MY ANSWERS - I'M NOT SCREAMING)

Does anyone have experience with Trading blox? I see the gentleman who developed it posts here and is held in very high regard.

YES - ABOUT 4 MONTHS NOW.

1 What are the differences between the versions?

I HAVE THE "FULL" VERSION - MEANING YOU CAN PROGRAM IT JUST LIKE TRADESTATION ONLY A LOT BETTER. THE LOWER PRICED VERSIONS COME WITH SYSTEMS ONLY I BELIEVE.

2 How much do you pay for datafeeds and where do you get them?

I BOUGHT A subscription TO PINNACLE DATA FOR ABOUT $200 FOR ONE YEAR WHICH INCLUDED THEIR DEEP HISTORY ON FUTURES. CSI DATA IS ANOTHER. CHECK THEIR WEBSITES.

3 Is it easy to use?

I WOULD SAY YES. IT DID NOT TAKE ME LONG TO TRANSCRIBE MY EXISTING SYSTEMS INTO TRADING blox. IS ALL YOU WANT TO DO IS USE THE BUILT IN SYSTEMS, IT COULD NOT BE ANY EASIER. THE blox DESIGN ALLOWS YOU TO MIX AND MATCH A WIDE RANGE OF TRADING TECHNIQUES.

4 Are you able to create your own systems and backtest or is it primarily for the preprogrammed systems (eg Turtles, donchian, etc.)

IF YOU HAVE THE FULL VERSION - WHICH I WOULD RECOMMEND - YOU CAN PROGRAM ANYTHING YOU CAN THINK OF. I HAVE NOT FOUND ANYTHING I WANT TO DO THAT CAN'T BE DONE IN TRADING blox - AND IT DOES A WHOLE LOT MORE THAN WHAT I COULD EVER DO IN TRADESTATION. IT ALSO RUNS INCREDIBLY FAST. MULTIPLE SYSTEMS CAN BE APPLIED ON MULTIPLE PRODUCTS OVER DECADES AND BACKTESTS RUN IN 1/100 OF THE TIME THAN TRADESTATION WOULD HAVE DONE. AND TRADESTATION CANNOT DO ANY PORTFOLIO ANALYSIS WITHOUT ADDON SOFTWARE - THERE IS NO COMPARISON AND I LABORED WITH TRADESTATION FOR MANY YEARS.

It seems like the customer support is good, I've read through their forum and Curtis posts there often.

THE SUPPORT IS FIRST CLASS - COULDN'T BE BETTER.

YOU CAN TELL I'M A BIG FAN.

IF YOU ARE SERIOUS ABOUT TRADING OR GETTING INTO TRADING, I WOULD START WITH TRADING blox BUILDER. IT SIMPLY DOES THINGS THAT YOU HAVE TO BE ABLE TO DO IF YOU WANT TO SEE THE MARKETS CLEARLY.

I WASTED MANY THOUSANDS OF DOLLARS BUYING TRADING SYSTEMS WHICH ARE ALL NOW GATHERING DUST IN THE DRAW. WITH TRADING blox YOU ARE BUYING A "BEST IN CLASS" (AND THAT IS ANY CLASS) BACKTESTING ENGINE WHICH ALSO HAPPENS TO COME WITH A DOZEN OR SO EXCELLENT TRADING SYSTEMS. I'VE NEVER SEEN A BETTER DEAL IN THE FUTURES INDUSTRY THAN THAT.

Hi Runningman - I have been a user of Trading Blox Builder (TBB) for the past 1.5 years or so. The Firm also sells two other products: Trading Blox Turtle and Trading Blox Professional but my comments will only pertain to TBB:

1 - TBB ships with 10 years of free sample data from CSI (38 futures, 15 forex, and 120 stocks). The sample data can be brought up-to-date simply by selecting a menu item in TBB. TBB should work with all external datafeeds that support ASCII and/or MetaStock file formats (e.g. www.csidata.com)

2 - TBB is a very powerful tool so there is a learning curve involved if you want to build a system from scratch. Thankfully, TBB currently ships with good documentation and a number of pre-programmed systems that can be tinkered with. I find the user interface to be intuitive.

3 - You can use TBB to create and backtest pretty much any type of price-based trading system you can imagine. TBB performs true portfolio-level testing - this means that you are able to test rather sophisticated risk management, money management and dynamic portfolio selection strategies.

Curtis and Tim have provided us with outstanding tech support - as you have noticed, they are very active in the public forums (they are even more active in the private client forums).

TradingBlox has, as you can tell, fans like no other. I'm not a user of the software mainly because of the price and the size of my account - but I would love to use the software - it just seems great. It will require programming, however!

I have used Trading Blox since its inception and it is worth every cent. You will find many posts by myself and others on the developers' website and indeed elsewhere on this site. Try to find someone who lives close to you and has the system so you can take a good look.

I won't go into further details - you will find plenty of information on the TB website. Its a must have for mechanical systems traders using EOD data.